


five string serenade

by orphan_account



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Again, Cute, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, if u listen to 'lucy in the sky with diamonds' while taking copious amounts of lsd, implied mental health issues, its really sweet i promise, like cute and metaphorical, realising theyre in love, soft, you may have a chance of understanding this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-13 06:20:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20169568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: George can see planets in Will’s eyes. Can see a million stars all burning their own paths, forging a life ahead. There are the beginnings and endings of death, and a hundred other stop-starts that make his blood turn cold and his bones feel hollow.He doesn’t deserve Will, nor his rocketships and the life they hold. But he has him. Has his indigo pink skies and golden molten clouds, has the promise of forever hidden in the dark, foreign part of his skin. Has his stolen words written out like they belong to him.Like Will belongs to him.





	five string serenade

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote the ending of this on call with my gf and she kept saying 'its like the forest fic' so. enjoy that.
> 
> also [heres a song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSSPoPYe26s), i dont remember where i got the title from this so i googled it and the song came up and i decided i liked it lol

George wakes up to a group of Year Sevens playing music from their iPhones outside of his window. He doesn’t recognise their songs but they make him think all pink-yellow-green, lion dens and shark teeth on strings. Angry, and sad. 

They make him feel lonely. Make him feel tired and nauseous and like his stomach is falling out from underneath him. 

One of them starts singing along, rough and loud and out of tune. George hears him like he’d hear shouting through a vacuum, like yelling in space. Pink and green and yellow, angry and sad and lonely and lots of things at once. The blues and indigos swap out for dull oranges and bleed back into red, dark and mad. 

He doesn’t know who they are, doesn’t know their songs or their words, but he listens anyway. He imagines the story that they’re telling - the stories that he’s telling in return - and the hundreds of teeny tiny pieces of soul that they’re dropping all over the place. Leaving twisty turny trails of love and life and breathing behind them.

It flip flops his stomach, thinking about the permanence and impermanence of it all - and the irony between them. George swallows down all of his colours, all his lions dens and shark teeth on strings, blinks away and yells in space and tries not to think about it any more than he should.

It proves a harder task than he thought, but he manages it, and the rainbow blends into a sepia, dull and old and tired. Ironic. He lets it be.

  


* * *

  


Alex is pink and orange and sunset soft, cotton candy sweet. Melted chocolate in the sun. Cherry red lollipops and mile wide grins, hiding shattered glass eyes and too many rough edges.

Maybe, somewhere, somehow, George would think it beautiful. Think him beautiful. Maybe, in some universe, Alex and he would be together. He’s almost sure of it. He’d mould Alex’s strawberry chapstick into his own, deeper, darker lovesick lipstick. But not today. Not here.

Alex has James, anyway. James, who is tall and dark and all the better for it, who is forest green and mint humidifiers, who holds Alex’s hand and doesn’t let go.

They look good together. They look good in love. George thinks rosy cheeks suit Alex, and no matter what Alex says, George knows he agrees. 

Sometimes, he wonders if he could have the same. And then he thinks about who he could have it with. Will, maybe. Will, who sends him gracious smiles and doesn’t care if George doesn’t pay him back, who has soft hair but flattens it with caps and hair gel. Who looks at George like he hung the stars but only when he doesn’t see. 

Maybe he loves Will. He’s not quite sure, because there is so much he hasn’t learnt yet and love is last on that list. But maybe there is some deep, dark, hidden part of his heart that knows, a part that he is not paying enough attention to but he thinks he’s scared of what’ll happen if he does. 

Being scared is candy apple green. The same colour as glow in the dark stars. It tastes bitter in his mouth, the same way he’d expect mothballs to taste. Maybe that’s what it is. Being afraid like that is wearing mothball t-shirts and candy apple green and horrible, horrible things. 

Sometimes it feels like Will understands that. Understands where being scared and feeling fear are both different but absolutely the same - fear is blue and deep, running out of oxygen and drowning before you can even think twice. Not even Alex understands that, not enough anyway. Sometimes, being afraid is red and dark, iron strong and thick as blood but he can always, always breathe. All the same but sickeningly different.

Some days, he and Alex go hours without even talking. Alex has James round - or James has Alex round - and he’s gone before George is awake, or they just won’t cross paths across the whole day. George never imagined he’d feel lonely with a roommate, and he knows it isn’t Alex’s fault, but his heart still aches and his blood still runs blue. 

Will is more than that. Will puts his hand on George’s chest and breathes in for him - moves the whole universe for him until their centre of gravity is based in no one but each other and George has never felt this way about anyone before, not ever. He’s not even sure how to begin his heart beating properly again, but really, he’s not quite sure he minds. Will manages to align himself with George just right to the point where George couldn’t ever imagine anyone else there. 

Like now; Alex has James in his room, curled into each other in the way that strikes cold, icy loneliness deep into George’s being. Will lets himself into their apartment and flicks the kettle on immediately, second nature once he sees George cuddled on the sofa in a blanket and a hoodie that probably doesn’t belong to him.

Will doesn’t speak until he has steaming mugs of tea in their hands. George relishes in the upwards curl of steam and the damp warmth of it. 

“How is it today?” He asks, words loud in the silence. George knows what he’s talking about: the dull grey smog that blankets his brain from day to day, that rarely seems to dissipate but Will can always, always see through it.

If George didn’t know better, he’d say Will had superpowers. Even though he does know better, sometimes he still thinks that.

“Heavy,” George says. The words taste like dust bunnies on his tongue and he tries not to choke on them. Will knows what he means though - he always does. 

“Yeah,” he says, like he can also taste the dust bunnies. “Alex with James?”

“Mm.”

Their knees knock together. “You want to do anything?” Will asks. He knocks their knees together again, deliberately this time. George feels the corners of his lips turn up.

He shakes his head. “Not today.” Blue-purple-green. Not today. Always not today. There is never a tomorrow.

“Alright,” Will says, like it really truly is. So much so that George believes it too, just for a second. “Mind if I put Fifa on?”

George shakes his head, so Will reaches over to switch their TV on. If Alex hears the game, maybe he’ll venture out into the living room too. George almost hopes he does. When Will sits back, his shoulders fold into George’s. George lets his bones breathe under Will’s touch.

  


* * *

  


Will is a hundred colours at once. The whole rainbow. Too fast clouds and starry night skies, and far too many colours. George’s eyes hurt looking at him but he can’t break his gaze. He doesn’t want to look away. Will’s smile is too wide, his cheeks stretch over bone, and all George wants is to hold them and smooth out all the smile lines.

He sees him staring. “What?”

“Nothing,” George says. “I like your smile.”

Will’s cheeks turn dusty pink, high across the bridge of his nose. “Thank you.”

“It’s like… pink,” George continues. “Light pink, though. Not bright pink.”

“Pink?”

“Yeah. Your smile.”

Will smiles wider. “What colour is your smile?”

“Green,” George says. “Alex’s is orange.”

“Do you do that a lot?” Will asks. “The colour thing.”

George shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess. It just kind of happens, most of the time.”

“It’s cool,” Will says. George realises that he’d really like to kiss him. And then, after that, he’s just waiting on Will. 

  


* * *

  


“George,” Will says, honey and sticky and dripping with emotion, soft and slow and just like it always is. Beautifully familiar. Painfully unknown - George’s brain identifies all the lilts in his words now, picks them apart like a vulture until he doesn’t know if he’s imagining the emotions behind them or not. 

George doesn’t reply. He stares up at the ceiling and tries his hardest to ignore Will. 

“G,” Will tries. His voice wobbles. “I need- we need- I need to talk to you.”

“Yeah.” They both let it hang in the air for too long, the letters going stale and dripping sepia. Like cold tea.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” Will says, after several minutes of silence. It’s less of a question, and more an answer that George knows they were both always waiting for.

“Yeah,” he says again. Will knows. He always does.

“When?”

“Soon,” George says. “I don’t know.”

“Where?”

George breathes in. His breath shakes. “I don’t know.”

Will’s fingers brush over his cheek, leaving burning trails behind them. His lungs shudder. “Will you be safe?”

George nods. He lifts his hand to cover Will’s on his cheek. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Will says. George hears him breathe out. “I love you.”

“I know,” George says. Red. Redredred. Good red, not the scared kind of red, but only a bit. “I always knew,” he says, because he does. And he knows now. 

“What colour is that?” Will whispers, “When I say I love you?”

“Mm,” George says. “Good colours.”

Will’s laugh beats like a clock against the back of George’s skull, ticking down to something but he doesn’t know what; he can’t get it out of his head but he’s not sure he wants to.

“Will you remember this?” He asks, words melting into George’s skin like they’ve always belonged there. “Remember us?”

“I hope so,” George says. He hopes he remembers this. Will is not something he ever wants to forget.

“Okay,” Will says again. “Will you let me kiss you?” He asks, and George feels his heart thump in and out of time, the cool-warm-blue of Will’s breath washing over him.

George nods. Will’s lips are soft and gentle, teasing and familiar and hundred other things. George thinks he says something, blows some kind of life into George’s lungs, but it doesn’t matter. He has Will in his arms, now, tangled into some kind of tightly woven knot. It feels, almost, like he’s taking one final breath of fresh air, like Will is a pocket of release hanging onto the moon.

George can see planets in Will’s eyes. Can see a million stars all burning their own paths, forging a life ahead. There are the beginnings and endings of death, and a hundred other stop-starts that make his blood turn cold and his bones feel hollow.

He doesn’t deserve Will, nor his rocketships and the life they hold. But he has him. Has his indigo pink skies and golden molten clouds, has the promise of forever hidden in the dark, foreign part of his skin. Has his stolen words written out like they belong to him.

Like Will belongs to him.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading lol. hope u liked uwu. also yeah my last fic was an 'it' fic what about it. im broadening my horizons.
> 
> i hope u enjoyed this. 
> 
> also i dont know whats going on in it either, im trying to disguise my confusion in pretty words thank u.


End file.
